Dizzy new heights

There was altogether too much undissipated energy coursing through the veins of the younger members of the 6000 family this morning, and so a dissipation intervention was required.

City Rock was it. Indoor rock climbing with literally thousands of those weird plastic artificial hand and foot holds plastered across overhanging plywood walls and fibreglass cliff faces.

At R125 per child, it’s not cheap, and even then you’re limited as to what they are able to do. There are four automatic belay lines which they can use and then there are a few walls where they can free climb. But if you want to use the rest of the facilities, you need to hire an instructor to help you along, and that’s an additional R150 per hour.

For two kids for an hour, that’s R400 (about €0.57 at today’s exchange rate *weeps*). Plenty wonga, especially as Scoop wouldn’t climb higher than about 3 metres even when attached to several tonnes of warehouse.
So we didn’t do that today.

That said, the kids did enjoy themselves a lot. Alex especially wanted to climb all of the things, and ended up frustrated by the roof, so maybe we’ll look to share an instructor one day in the future.
In the meantime, plenty of excess energy was dissipated and the rest of the afternoon and evening passed off without any problems.

Intervention successful.

iTunes broke my PC

And judging by the recent traffic on the Apple support forums, I are not alone.
Suffice to say, don’t try and install any updates to the program if you’re running any version of Windows.

Something bad will happen.

Anyway, between trying to fix that, being a dragon guarding some treasure in the garden and heading out to a housewarming this evening, I find that I’m right out of time for posting anything other than this important warning.

You’re welcome.

Brother

Morten’s new one (and allegedly the title of the new album as well), Brother, as performed at Norway’s Spellemannprisen last week:

Peter Kvint’s influence is obvious to those in the know. And as for the meaning of the song:

It has been written about brothers in general. It can be a Muslim brother or my own brother. It is about human relationships. It’s about humanity.

So, there you have it. Much promise for the new album here.

Weren’t we lucky in 2010?

Can you remember all that time ago, back to those Halcyon days of Portugal v North Korea, France v Paraguay and no load-shedding? June 11th to July 11th 2010 was one of the finest months South Africa has ever had. No crime, seamless organisation and an amazing advert for the country in front of a worldwide audience.

It could all have been so different. Imagine, if you dare, that final at Soccer City. Howard Webb with his whistle, Nigel de Jong with his studs up and Andreas Iniesta going on another mazy dribble to absolutely nowhere, before falling over theatrically. The eyes of the world watching, enthralled…

And then the power goes out.

It’s a disaster. The country is a laughing stock and… and… well, look, it’s just a disaster, isn’t it?

But it didn’t happen. Despite the fact that we’ve long had power woes – 2008 in particular stands out as being load-shedtastic – we made it through that month with not even a flickering hint of a blackout. How?

Well, the answer comes – some 3½ years later – from a one Nelson Thabo Modupe, of Lichtenburg, who now tells us that:

he prevented power cuts during the 2010 Soccer World Cup through his prayers

You almost want his third name to be Jacob, don’t you? Just as long as his fourth one isn’t Julius.
Anyway, I digress. Often.

The fact is that Nelson saved the country from ridicule and deserves some sort of reward. He’s attempting to claim that now in the shape of a R250,000,000 (that’s about $6.09 at current exchange rates) payout from Eskom:

because he saved the power utility the burden and humiliation of load shedding

And, given the global audience and the hugely damaging effects of a power outage in any of the 64 World Cup games would have had, I think he probably deserves it. Cough up out of your phat R12.24 billion profit for the six months to September 2013, please Eskom. Give the man his money.

But before Nelson disappears off back to the North West province to buy heaps of precious metals with his newly-gained moola, just let’s hold on a bit.

Because with great power (and let’s face it, getting God to help Eskom out of tight spot is great power), comes great responsibility. And that’s where I think Nelson has let us all down.

How could we forget the infamous fake sign language interpreter at the Nelson Mandela Memorial service held at…wow… Soccer City, just last month? Yes, with (potentially even more of the) world’s eyes on us again, on the big stage – the biggest stage – we were internationally embarrassed. What an absolute shambles it was, start to finish. There were pieces in Time magazine, Sky News, the BBC and, Oh Sweet Jesus, even the Daily Mail – LIKE THEY NEED ANY MORE AMMUNITION?!?!?!?!???1!!

Nelson. Oh, Nelson (no, not that one, this one)… You could have prayed and you could have prevented this burden and humiliation of the fake sign language interpreter. You had the power to do this, Nelson, and yet you chose not to? Why would you expose us all to this ridicule, Nelson?

You have let the country down, and we deserve and demand compensation. Perhaps unsurprisingly for the purposes of this blog post, I feel that about R250,000,000 should see us suitably placated.

And now we know what you are capable of – and we freely admit that the whole Eskom thing was a truly remarkable effort, Nelson – I’ll give you until the end of February to have a word upstairs and get rid of that terrible Zuma bloke. Otherwise, I expect to see your cheque book out again.

I hope we’re clear on things now, Nelson.

Ten Years

Yep. Today marks 10 years since I emigrated to South Africa. In that time, a lot has happened, probably the biggest things being my marriage to a wonderful woman and the arrivals and growth of our two wonderful children. [And this blog, of course – Ed.]

Yes, and this blog, of course.

South Africa is home for me. It has been for a long time. And yes, it has its difficulties and its quirks, but then so does everywhere and one learns to adapt and live with the stuff that the place chucks at you. Life is rarely dull, and perhaps that’s one of the reasons that I’m so happy here. Yes, I still miss friends and family back in the UK, but there’s technology which lessens that, at least to a certain extent.

I’m not sure if this anniversary is a thing that one celebrates – I mean, do people mark anniversaries of moving within one country? – but I’m always game for anything involving a steak, so that’ll be what happens this evening.
Maybe a little understated, but tender and pleasant. Just like me.

In the meantime, here’s to the next ten years.

Cheers.